I Will Not Shut Up, I Will Not Leavehttps://antunezen.wordpress.com
An English translation of "Ni me callo, ni me voy" - from CubaWed, 12 Jul 2017 04:46:30 +0000enhourly1http://wordpress.com/https://s2.wp.com/i/buttonw-com.pngI Will Not Shut Up, I Will Not Leavehttps://antunezen.wordpress.com
No, No and No Raul Castrohttps://antunezen.wordpress.com/2014/08/30/no-no-and-no-raul-castro/
https://antunezen.wordpress.com/2014/08/30/no-no-and-no-raul-castro/#respondSun, 31 Aug 2014 04:14:08 +0000http://antunezen.wordpress.com/?p=451]]>This I believe is the second or third occasion that I write to you, and as always without the least mood or desire that you answer me, because given the absolute contempt and disgust that emanates from your person I can’t feel otherwise.

Señor Dictator and Genocide, 24 years and five months ago at barely 25 years, five months and 15 days of age I dared to defy you. Surely your lackeys and sycophants in the high command of the political police and the party mentioned it to you.

I remind the dictator, that night you pronounced in the city of Santiago de Cuba that call to the Fourth Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba, and as always with a discourse like so many and like so many of your brother’s, barely a few paid you any attention.

I recall that I was in the plaza that you all call Revolution, where big loudspeakers transmitted to mute, hungry and above all deaf people your verbal diarrhea. That was Thursday March 15, 1990, Stalinist Europe was falling, the old Soviet empire was at the point of disintegrating and here in the Caribbean a senile caste was clinging to power and refusing to implement reforms.

For demanding them, that evening, your bullying forces savagely beat me, their educational bodies tortured me and instructed me so that months later your lackey judiciary would sentence me to deprivation of liberty for the famous crime of “oral enemy propaganda.”

Señor Dictator, I believe it feasible to confess to you that at the moment of my detention I was still unaware of the long and proven history of crime and terror instituted by your brother and you.

From the forced labor, the concentration camps of the UMAP, the sad history of those captive peoples and not to mention the Castro meddling in the internal affairs of other countries and in international conflicts. Maybe because of that lack of knowledge, I only asked for reforms and screamed that communism was a mistake and a utopia. Today, after knowing your system better, I ask for its overthrow and I catalog communism as an aberration and a crime: the social plague of the 20th century.

It was only enough for me that day to feel that as a young man and a Cuban, I was not free; that as a social being I lacked something in order to be able to breathe and walk. I felt that I was prohibited from speaking and that I must either continue using the mask in order to avoid problems, or remove it and act and live in accord with myself although that would mean suffering the most horrible repression.

I did that, I defied you, General without battles. I did it in spite of your known fame as a cruel and bloodthirsty man. I did it, General and the only thing that I regret is not having had the valor, the opportunity or perhaps the possibility of doing it much sooner.

On the other hand, I also have to confess to you that the idea never entered my mind that such a sickening fury of hatred and harassment was going to be applied to me.

That in 1993, three years after the arrest and completing my unjust imprisonment in Cause # 4 of 1990, your famous division for crimes against State Security in the gloomy Popular Provincial Tribunal of Santa Clara condemned me again, now in Cause #5 of that year for supposed acts against your socialist Revolution for which I had to spend 17 years and 38 days of uninterrupted political imprisonment which offered me the possibility of learning firsthand about torture and vexation as a weapon of political repression.

Raul Castro, my case is known to you, because it was you and no one else who ordered the multiple searches and lootings by those who have victimized me in my home during the last weeks where in the grossest flaunting of force and impunity you commanded that your cowards and opportunist assault troops partially destroy my house and steal items left and right on more than one occasion, goods, office materials, medications, food during these acts known in the Cuban jargon as acts of thievery, well, in the end, each does what he is taught.

Señor General, and now that you also title yourself president of the Councils of State and of Ministers, I know well how many letters opponents have sent you from within and without asking you to carry out reforms and political opening as well as to hold elections. They ask it of you as if you really were a president and as if in Cuba a true government were in power and not a tyranny.

We know that at any moment, you, a Machiavellian and opportunistic tyrant, are going to accept what they ask and carry out a referendum, that is to say, an electoral farce under your control, where like in Venezuela the totalitarian officialism will continue in power.

And it is no longer a secret for anyone, the desperate and astute maneuvers that you and your acolytes carry out in order to manufacture supposed opponents and assure with them the dynastic and ideological succession.

But we warn you, General, which is one of the reasons for this missive, that we, the decent Cubans committed to the future of our country, we are not going to accept that fraudulent and cosmetic change that you all forge. Know also that the Cuban Resistance does not expect or want reforms implemented by the criminal tyranny over which you preside. The only reforms to be accepted by us would be after your overthrow or withdrawal from power, which the people will carry out from their base.

Señor Dictator, enough tricks, because you will not get another new mandate, that does not even matter to us. That you carry out reforms in the arena of economics and migration, that is a bunch of lies, and that does not matter to us, either. That your regime carries out an update of its model is another fallacy and another lie. That is more of the same. That you will sell a monetary reform, tremendous trick and lie, General.

We, the people of Cuba, need a democratic system where a market economy prevails. One, two, three or ten thousand currencies, it does not matter, as long as there exists a centralized and asphyxiating economy like your totalitarian system. We, Señor dictator, we do not want you, nor reforms nor openings, you people are not our owners, nor do you need to dictate our guidelines.

We know that your time on the earth is running out, and that powerful interests have shown the intention of playing the game or dividing juicy profits at the cost of the pain and sacrifice of the Cuban people.

General Raul Catro, warning about the danger of the fraudulent change, you ordered killed Oswaldo Paya and young Harold Cepero. I doubt that you now have enough goons to keep killing the thousands and thousands that like Paya and Harold will keep denouncing your tricks and constant maneuvers.

For Laura Pollan, a defenseless woman, you sent your paid assassins to get you out of it, because you could not defeat her in her marches every Sunday on Avenue Quinta. It did not matter to you her condition as a woman and the justice of her cry. But also Laura defeated you, coward General, because her valiant troops of the Ladies in White survived the cruel execution of their leader and now spread like patriotic wildfire across the whole Island.

And they have also defeated you: Pedro Luis Boitel, Olegario Charlotte Pileta, Orlando Zpata, Wilman Villar and many others who had the courage to sacrifice themselves in the name of liberty and in respect for their dignity, this honor that you lack as well as your goons who threatened me with death in reprisal for my slogan that “I won’t shut up and I won’t leave Cuba.”

They themselves, also, barely some days ago, during one of the many arrests of which I have been victim, tortured and beat me, now that according to them and you, I sabotage the efforts of your tyranny to normalize relations with the United States.

Know General Raul Castro that neither the absurd precaution of house arrest that weighs against me and the evident threat of being assassinated, will be able to make me change my purpose which is shared by thousands and thousands of Cubans.

You all will not be able, Raul Castro, to crush a people who have grown tired of living without freedom, just as you will not be able to materialize the international conspiracy that is conceived against the cause of freedom for Cuba. That conspiracy, Raul Castro, will not have success, whether it comes from Havana, Washington, Brussels or Vatican City itself. You people will not be able, General, because as much as you, your family or that cruel and bloodthirsty party may know, you will be excluded from all process of democratic change because you all mean the negation of democracy itself.

And tell your subordinates, General, that I am here and will be, in my beloved homeland of Placetas from which neither you nor your repressive forces nor anyone will remove me, and that my humble home, although profaned, vandalized and sacked by your faction, will continue being a bastion of Resistance, fight, refuge and sanctuary for my compatriots who fight against you and in favor of liberty and justice.

And tell them also, General, your promoters and accomplices, whether your spokesmen are in Miami, Washington, Brussels, Havana or the Vatican itself to stop rubbing their hands, we say no to your preservation of the status quo because here in Cuba there will be no reconciliation without there first being justice, liberty and democracy.

And, as we foresee, also tell some governments that call themselves democratic and are in on the conspiracy, that they are wasting time, General, that the event that we Cubans need and hope for international solidarity, does not mean that some country or foreign power, as very powerful or influential as it may be, is going to form part of our process of change, because Cubans, those who are within and those who are without, we are convinced that the solution for Cuba has to be and must be resolved among Cubans, excluding of course you people, General, who because of the damage that you have done to our nation, do not even deserve to call yourselves Cubans.

Raul Castro Ruz, in the name of the people of Cuba, my fellow prisoners and the victims of your dictatorship, I tell you no, no and no.

From Placetas, in the heart of Cuba, Jorge Luis Garcia Perez “Antunez,” who will not shut up or leave Cuba.

Attention, attention: Never has Cuba been so close to freedom, but never like now has danger loomed that can be cut short and mediated by opportunistic efforts, lacks of faith and even the occasional traitor added to this clear and shameful pact with the Castros…

If we do not stop this dirty and unpatriotic plot in time the results will be the huge fraud-change fraud where the continuity of the Castro regime will be guaranteed when descendants of the leaders of the regime and certain opportunists from here and there will divide up the nation like the booty of corsairs and pirates.

We won’t allow them to eliminate the Cuban resistance. The memory of our fallen and the sacrifice of our compatriots deserve respect and they can’t sit at a negotiating table. I speak on behalf of those who are opposed to a reconciliation without justice first.

As one of the most important Cuban resistance slogans say: I do want real change.

Placetas, 18 July 2013.

19 July 2013

]]>https://antunezen.wordpress.com/2013/07/23/warning-signal/feed/0antunezenDeclaration of Saratogahttps://antunezen.wordpress.com/2013/05/07/declaration-of-saratoga/
https://antunezen.wordpress.com/2013/05/07/declaration-of-saratoga/#respondWed, 08 May 2013 03:14:28 +0000http://antunezen.wordpress.com/?p=445]]>People of Cuba, people from Camaguey, and all compatriots:

We are a group of peaceful human rights activists and pro-democracy opponents who today have met in the already emblematic Saratoga neighborhood in the city of Camaguey, where after fruitful exchange and work meeting, we are launching to the world this historic declaration in which we express the following points of view:

We express our most firm and unconditional support to our brothers of the Patriotic Union of Cuba (UNPACU) who, in the east of the country are struggling between life and death on a hunger strike. We hold the regime and its political police publicly responsible for the consequences for their lives and health that may result from the just demand for our arbitrarily imprisoned brother. We send to each and every one of the strikers and the members and officers of the iconic and courageous organization, the Patriotic Union of Cuba (UNPACU), headed by well-known opposition leader José Daniel Ferrer García, our deepest sympathy and affection.

Those of us present took the opportunity to publicly call world attention to the unfortunate cases of Nicolás Felipe González Menéndez and Arcelio López Rojas, in the prisons of Villa Clara and Camagüey respectively, who may lose their lives in hunger strikes they are engaged in separately and for different reasons. The cases of Nicholas and Arcelio are paradoxical and for us the silence and indifference of the media, as well as a few activists in and out of Cuba, is unacceptable; for the simple reason of not being recognized as political prisoners, they are denied coverage and following in the media.

Those who are listening to us know that we are here today for each and every one of the prisoners in Cuba, whether or not they have the status of political prisoners, whatever the causes for which they were imprisoned, they have the right and solidarity with them. And whoever lacks the courage to do it, let them know that today we met here in Saratoga, and open and responsibly we speak up for all those in Cuba and elsewhere in the world who risk their lives in the just demand of their rights.

Although we will miss the commemoration of Mother’s Day, we want to congratulate in advance Cuban women as mother, wife and woman. And especially in these moments they have been at the forefront of the vanguard and fight in the Cuban resistance, confronting with courage and patriotism the totalitarian repression. This time we want to congratulate several Cuban Marianas these days who are carrying the truth of Cuba to different parts of the world and international forums such as: Berta Soler, Yoanis Sánchez, Belkis Cantillo, Laura Labrada Pollán, for all of them on behalf of Cuba, many congratulations.

Those meeting here today and gathered here on this public balcony in view of Camagüey and the military are here confirming our sacred commitment to the peaceful defense of human rights and democratic change, and especially in unity in action, as a basic component in all liberating process.

Those gathered here in Saratoga, members of the following organizations: Camagüey Human Rights Unit, Pedro Luis Boitel National Civic Resistance Movement, Rosa Parks Women’s Movement for Civil Rights, members of the Central Opposition Coalition, all affiliated to the Orlando Zapata Tamayo National Front of Civic Resistance.

Compatriots, here we are in the provincial headquarters of Human Rights Party of Cuba affiliated with the Andrei Sakharov Foundation, a pioneer flagship of our coalition of coalitions, we are:

Yenni Barayobre Columbié

Daniel Miguel Jiménez

Elicardo Freire Jiménez

Santos Manuel Fernández Sánchez

Alexander Pérez Aguilar

Orlando Romaguer Peña

Orlando Gómez Echevarria

Julio Columbie Batista

Damaris Moya Portieles

Jorge Luis García Pérez Antúnez

We also want to emphasize the presence of Yris Tamara Pérez Aguilera on a convalescent bed recovering from pain of a beating and the fear that we have because there may be a repressive action and we may be suppressed. Also here are the opposition activist and mother of Santos Fernández Sánchez, Elida Sanchez Jimenez.

6 May 2013

]]>https://antunezen.wordpress.com/2013/05/07/declaration-of-saratoga/feed/0antunezenAbout the migratory "reforms"https://antunezen.wordpress.com/2013/01/16/about-the-migratory-reforms/
https://antunezen.wordpress.com/2013/01/16/about-the-migratory-reforms/#respondWed, 16 Jan 2013 17:12:51 +0000http://antunezen.wordpress.com/?p=442]]>In February 2008, the United States government granted me a special humanitarian visa for my consequent admission into Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami in order to treat my severe cardiovascular infection which I still have. Because I put as a condition real guarantees of returning as soon as I finished the examinations, and not accepting the humiliating condition of permanent exit from the country, the political police denied me the famous exit permit.

Friend who follows me on Twitter, it still has not occurred to me to reactivate my passport, foreseeing the little Castro-communist game. But if I ask myself, in the case of seeking it, will the tyranny permit me to leave to go to the hospital and then return, knowing that I will neither shut up nor leave?

Camarioca, in the ’60’s. Mariel in the ’80’s. The rafter crisis in 1994. And now, the migratory reformers: the escape valves continue, the strategies continue, the bleeding of our nation by the Castro-communist tyranny continues.

Alert, compatriots. Alert, compatriots. This can be a little game of incalculable and dire consequences for our nation.

Translated by mlk

January 15 2013

]]>https://antunezen.wordpress.com/2013/01/16/about-the-migratory-reforms/feed/0antunezenMembers of the internal Cuban Resistance reaffirm their pledge to keep up the fight for democratic change in the streets of Cubahttps://antunezen.wordpress.com/2012/11/30/members-of-the-internal-cuban-resistance-reaffirm-their-pledge-to-keep-up-the-fight-for-democratic-change-in-the-streets-of-cuba/
https://antunezen.wordpress.com/2012/11/30/members-of-the-internal-cuban-resistance-reaffirm-their-pledge-to-keep-up-the-fight-for-democratic-change-in-the-streets-of-cuba/#respondSat, 01 Dec 2012 01:38:16 +0000http://antunezen.wordpress.com/?p=439]]>Today is the 27th of November 2012 and after having sung the notes of the National Hymn a group of Cuban resistance members, militants from different organizations of the peaceful opposition, are here in the city of Placetas on the roof top of the home headquarters and we are and are going to give a reading in the voice of Sara Marta Fonseca Quevedo of a joint statement of various organizations about themes of the Cuban resistance.

Statement:

Many opposition organizations gathered in the city of Placetas this November 27, 2012, in order to draft and make known this joint statement in which they express their commitment and collaboration, as well as their reciprocal loyalty in moments in which the regime through its political police becomes embroiled in a dirty and pre-meditated campaign to bleed the vital forces of the Cuban resistance, specifically those who have contributed most to that important breach and earned areas of freedom.

The Cuban Party for Human Rights affiliated with the Andrei Sakharov Foundation, the Rosa Parks Women’s Movement for Civil Rights, the House of the Prisoner Ernesto Diaz Madruga, the Mario Manuel de la Pena Movement for Human Rights, the Cuban Association of Free Yorubas, the Pedro Luis Boitel National Civil Resistance Movement, want to let emerge in an open and responsible way our resolute decision to respond with unity, commitment and activism to the despicable effort to remove the internal resistance from the streets and public spaces in order to return them to their homes and enclosed places.

Those present here, all promoters of civil disobedience as a fighting strategy, want to make quite clear our unconditional support for any civilian project that may be put into practice, emphasizing our priority of those initiatives that further international repercussion and other media impacts that may promote change, from the citizen, from the actual phases and taking into account the potential factors for democratic change.

Long live the Cuban Party for Human Rights affiliated with the Andrei Sakharov Foundation! Viva!

Long live the Pedro Luis Boite National Civil Resistance Movement! Viva!

Long live the Rosa Parks Women’s Movement for Civil Rights! Viva!

Long live the Front! Viva!

Long live free Cuba! Viva!

The streets are of the people!

We are all Resistance!

Attention, attention, we are informing you that before undertaking this activity military troops armed with bladed weapons have just entered the children’s circle located next to my home, the Golden Age, there is stupor, there is fear, there are several relatives that have approached this circle to take their children and we are blaming the communist Castro tyranny in the person of Raul Jazares, chief of the political police for the psychological damage that the sight of those firearms may cause to those little children.

Yesterday the dissident Cuban writer Luis Felipe Rojas Rosabel, author of the blog “Crossing the Barbed Wire,” left the Holguin city of San German for the land of the free. Today, therefore, is a very sad day both for the opposition as well as for independent journalists and the Cuban blogosphere, because the teacher of teachers has left, a complete authority on discourse and recommendations for writers and bloggers, and above all a true specialist on sending multimedia via cellphones.

Rojas Rosabel was the first journalist to whom I granted an interview in April of 2007 after I got out of prison. We owe him a lot: expert in sending Twitters and multimedia, exemplary patriot, religious Cuban and sensible guajiro. Rojas Rosabel leaves a big hole in his party, extremely difficult to fill, but a pleasant memory and the most positive of impressions.

In his native San German, the repressive forces took the opportunity to try to fabricate a dissident intellectual from a left-leaning and extreme moderate to counteract Luis Felipe and his important work, a move that struck at the dignity and firmness of purpose of our brother whom we are sure that, from the land of the free, will continue as a leader, teacher, fighter and committed patriot and above all a source of pride for all of us who had the honor to meet his and share with him in the struggle.

One more Cuban who is forced to leave his homeland, to protect his existence and that of his family. One more friend who left and whom I don’t know if I will ever see again. One more reason to continue fighting, proud of the chosen path. When men like Luis Felipe Rojas Rosabel exist, despite the difficulties and geographic distance, we are convinced that the freedom of Cuba may be delayed, but it is certain, very certain.

The signatories below, members of a countless number of organizations which make up the Central Opposition Coalition, an entity affiliated with the Orlando Zapata Tamayo National Front of Civic Resistance, have gathered this Wednesday, 3rd of October 2012, in the already historic and war-hardened neighborhood of Virginia, in Santa Clara, where we will write down in a public declaration of principles the following aspects and commitments.

1- Today those who sign and seal this declaration support the initiative named “Civic Demand for Another Cuba”.

– At the same time, all and each of those present ratify the viable character of the program “Towards a National Stoppage” as a continuity and colophon to the campaign of No Cooperation in its first and second stages. As promoters of the same, we make clear that with the campaign “Towards a National Stoppage” we initially make a call to take consciousness on the side of the Cuban population of the necessity to create conditions that permit, with the participation of all Cubans, a gradual stoppage of economic, political and social structures and mainly the repressive ones of the Castro Communism.

3- Those making this declaration declaration today in the Neighborhood of Virginia see with consent and patriotic pridethe birth and positive development of Homes of the Prisoner in Cuba, genuine expression of the maturity of the unanimity of a nation that they try to divide based on absurd categorizations.

4- At times when the forces of domestic resistance suffer like never before from the repressive onslaught of the tyranny, we request solidarity from the international community. From our hard reality we pray so that the people of Venezuela rescue again the destiny of this brother nation and with it the future and stability of our hemisphere.

5- The Central Opposition Coalition and the National Front of Civic Resistance Orlando Zapata Tamayo, ratifies its executive structure in Cuba, as well as to ratify the Assembly of Cuban Resistance as our representative outside Cuba.

Among the present organizations are found Resistance Movement, Rosa Parks Women Movement, Nationalist Party of Cuba, The Home of the Prisoner, among others, all the organizations ratify their unconditional permanence, eternal and faithful to the Coalition of Central Opposition and we recognize our leader Idania Yánez Contreras as figurewho most gathers us together with most important, serious, genuine leadership of the opposition in the center of the country.

Long Live the Coalition of Central Opposition.

Long Live Domestic Resistance.

Long Live Free Cuba.

Translated by: Anony GY

October 4 2012

]]>https://antunezen.wordpress.com/2012/10/22/a-declaration-from-virginia/feed/0Auto PostReunion de VirginiaMessage to Cubans Within and Outside Cuba and to International Public Opinionhttps://antunezen.wordpress.com/2012/09/23/message-to-cubans-within-and-outside-cuba-and-to-international-public-opinion/
https://antunezen.wordpress.com/2012/09/23/message-to-cubans-within-and-outside-cuba-and-to-international-public-opinion/#respondSun, 23 Sep 2012 17:33:13 +0000http://antunezen.wordpress.com/?p=429]]>Message to Cubans Within and Outside Cuba and to International Public Opinion from Jorge Luis Garcia Perez “Antunez” on the 15th of September

Read in the voice of Nonaida Paseiro Perez, the women’s right movement formed from the Rosa Parks Women’s Movement for Civil Rights.

After feeling my health worsen due to my hunger strike that lasted several days, and reacting to what appeared about the start and the demand of my protest in various media, I wanted to clarify the following.

First: I started the hunger strike on Friday September 7 at 6 pm, and not on Monday the 10th as did other opponents after giving a press conference.

Second: My demand is the release of political prisoner Jorge Vazquez Chaviano, or to give him a solution satisfying and acceptable to him. I am also protesting for the deplorable situation of the human rights in Cuba that occurs because of the systematic political accusation against me which is implied in the practice of house arrest.

For reasons of principle and not trusting in the existing health care system, controlled by another political policy, do not accept medical attention. From the previous statement it follows that only in an unconscious state if on their own initiative relatives or countrymen would take me to a health center due to their human feelings and sentiments.

]]>https://antunezen.wordpress.com/2012/09/23/message-to-cubans-within-and-outside-cuba-and-to-international-public-opinion/feed/0antunezenWhy I Stay (Part 2)https://antunezen.wordpress.com/2012/09/16/why-i-stay-part-2/
https://antunezen.wordpress.com/2012/09/16/why-i-stay-part-2/#respondSun, 16 Sep 2012 08:35:08 +0000http://antunezen.wordpress.com/?p=422]]>I stay in Cuba and do not leave because otherwise I cannot imagine having to ask for a white card or exit permit in order to permanently choose the place where I want to spend the rest of my life. I stay in Cuba because I could not bear the humiliation of having to seek permission from my country’s oppressors to return to my homeland at a time and for a period of their choosing. I prefer to stay because I fear that I will forget how to say “gracias” and “adiós,” and adapt to saying “thank you” and “bye.” Or will trade “está bien” for “O.K.”

I stay because in the hot afternoons of summer I prefer the breeze that comes down from the mountain to huddling in rooms where boxes with fake air called air-conditioning seem to chill you to your bones. I believe it is better to stay and thus avoid the tormented nostalgia of not being able to return to the plot of land where I was born, or the thought that my community, the Yuma, might say I am a foreigner and not a Cuban.

If you ask me why I stay, I would say because I believe in change and I want to be as close as possible when it comes. I stay because, if I left, my oppressors would no doubt say there is one less — one less anti-establishment voice, one less person protesting in the streets. I stay because, by doing so, I help to discredit those who say the ultimate objective of any dissident is to leave Cuba. I stay because every day I remember the torture and mistreatment I suffered for more than seventeen years in political prison, where they did not even let me attend my mother’s funeral.

I choose to stay each time I see the bite marks from the political police’s attack dogs. I stay because I have no feeling for Anglo-Saxon culture. Because my language is Spanish and my classics are those of Cervantes and not Shakespeare. Because since I was little I babbled the word “mamá” and not “mother.” And because no one can take away my second surname — my mother’s family name — as is common practice in countries of the north.

I stay because I cannot stand another way of life being imposed on me, living with strangers and being far away from where there is so much to do. I stay because my efforts at liberation are aimed at encouraging the thousands and thousands of my compatriots who have struggled for the return of a free Cuba, such as the brothers with long prison sentences, their family members, the victims and finally the a very significant segment of my people forced into exile.

I believe that my duty before leaving is to fight for the return and reunion of everyone in a free Cuba. Therefore I stay, especially when I imagine the sadness of our martyrs who died on foreign soil without seeing their fatherland free — martyrs like Julio Machado, Mario Chanes de Armas, Eusebio Peñalver, Msgr. Agustín Román, Fr. Loreto and all the many anonymous heroes buried in faraway lands. For all of them and for those who died in Castro’s dungeons, firing squads or the Straits of Florida. Or those like Laura Pollán, Osvaldo Payá and Harold Cepero, victims of the subtle brutality of Castro’s tyranny. For all of the above I stay.

September 14 2012

]]>https://antunezen.wordpress.com/2012/09/16/why-i-stay-part-2/feed/0antunezenRosa Parks Women Movement for Civil Rights Announces March in Honor of the Fallen Every Thursdayhttps://antunezen.wordpress.com/2012/09/09/rosa-parks-women-movement-for-civil-rights-announces-march-in-honor-of-the-fallen-every-thursday/
https://antunezen.wordpress.com/2012/09/09/rosa-parks-women-movement-for-civil-rights-announces-march-in-honor-of-the-fallen-every-thursday/#respondMon, 10 Sep 2012 03:04:25 +0000http://antunezen.wordpress.com/?p=418]]>The Rosa Parks Women’s Movement for Civil Rights announces that on Thursday it held its second weekly march in honor of the fallen despite the brutal arrests the members were subject to during the first march on 30 August; so we put out a wake-up call to national and international public opinion urging them to closely follow our march and that we fear for our lives.

These marches, which are called the weekly Rosa Parks Movement Marches to Honor the Fallen replace the earlier marches that were held by the women on the first of each month and will begin at the national headquarters of this movement which is located on Seventh Street South, No. 5, between Paseo Marti and Primera del Este in the municipality of Villa Clara, Placetas. The path of the march will be from Paseo to Primera del Norte, where it will turn left, returning to Park Cazayas to the Catholic church of St. Athanasius at this location.

These marches will be extended to the length and breadth of the island as above. The activists of the Movement chose Thursdays unanimously to hold the march, as the Day of the Orlando Zapata Tamayo National Civic Resistance Front and Civil Disobedience to which we are affiliated, and our dress will remain our usual black clothes of mourning, as we reflect on those who fell defending the homeland, praying the Our Father for each arrest caused by the repressive forces.

St. Athanasius Catholic Church, where the women of the Rosa Parks attend Mass every Thursday, is located on West Second Street and the corner of North First Street in the municipality Placetas, Villa Clara province.